Hank Nuwer, Author; Hazing Deaths Database

Happy to contribute an essay for Hazing Prevention Week. Thanks to Phi Delt for inviting me to its blog today. http://phideltblog.com/2012/09/24/from-broken-pledges-to-lives-of-fulfilled-promise/

Warning: this Pi Kappa Alpha practice is not only dangerous but gross. Luckily, Tennessee student survived. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2012/sep/24/ut-fraternity-suspended-over-graphic-alcohol/

Dear Congresswoman Wilson:  Hazing is one behavior problem in a school.  Plagiarism or the using of another person’s creative or research efforts without sourcing or attribution is another.

I support fully your attempts to get a federal law passed.

I do have to ask you why your poster with my hazing death list that I began so painstakingly in 1978 for Human Behavior magazine and updated just this month to 163 deaths was so cavalierly used by you without credit?

Please cease and desist in using information from my site without credit.

I put it up free of charge at great labor to myself for the public good.

I admire and acknowledge the work against hazing you are doing for the public good.

Now that I have given you credit, please grant my research equal measure of respect. — Respectfully, but insistently noting a “public cease and desist” request. Hank Nuwer, Moderator.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-09-20/news/fl-wilson-hazing-bill-20120920_1_robert-champion-pam-champion-congresswoman-frederica-wilson

Excerpt: She and other grieving relatives of hazing victims stood with Wilson behind a banner that depicted rows of tombstones and the words: “Hazing kills – 163 deaths to date. If you want to haze, lose your financial aid – not for days, but for LIFE!”

As a SUNY alumnus, I decry the letter to the New York Times written by head SUNY trustee H. Carl McCall to the New York Times. Dear H. Carl McCall, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kvetching.  In other words, say what positive steps have been taken but explain why hazing went on so long at SUNY Binghamton. How do you explain the near death in women’s volleyball at SUNY Geneseo? The deaths over time at Plattsburgh and Geneseo? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/opinion/field-reports-the-hazing-at-binghamton-u.html